Bestseller author and psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz about his relationship to the founder of his profession and to his patients.
The house of Sigmund Freud in London’s elegant and leafy Hampstead pulls people in till today. The founder of psychoanalysis lived here one more year after the Nazis had kicked him out of Berggasse in Vienna’s ninth district in 1938. Not only tourists and fans come to the house museum. His successors still like to live nearby. Many North London psychoanalysts are - like Freud - immigrants. Stephen Grosz, too. He came in the Seventies from the university in Berkely to study in Oxford, stayed in England ever since and works a few streets away from Freud’s house.

The new star among Freud’s disciples has somewhat outgrown him in theory and practice although he sees the importance of Freud’s central theories. Like Freud he likes to publish. Grosz writes a column for the “Financial Times”. His first book “The Examined Life: How We lose and Find Ourselves” has been on the UK bestseller list for the past months, about 50.000 copies have been sold and the book will be published in 21 languages.

Although he describes himself as “hugely Freudian” in the interview, his book cover does not say a word about it: “I wanted to remove everything that would stop someone from picking up my book”, Grosz apologetically. The tall 60 year old man keeps his white hair cut fashionably short, his glasses have strong black frames. Quite content and friendly he sits behind the couch from which his patients delivered the plot for his book week after week.

Profil: If I would be your patient and you write a book about my story – I would leave your services instantly. Did you ask your patients beforehand?

Grosz: I did. In almost all the cases the patients read the chapters and signed off on them. But of course no one comes to see me to have their stories written. They come to me for help. That’s also a reason why my stories are so short – it is only a moment of someone, even the spouses would not recognize them. I could never write anything that would surprise a patient. Some are with me for long years and there is a high level of trust between us. One patient comes here already 22 years.

Profil: If a patient comes to you for 22 years, is this not a little too long for a successful therapy?

Grosz: Depends who it is. My patient of 22 years is a man who is HIV positive. He believes the therapy saved his life. When he came first he had been told he only got two years. He learned a lot about himself and learned how to deal with his issues – how to have a partner and father children when you are HIV positive. It is not only understanding but also acceptance of yourself. We get love in our families when we grow up, but we do not always get acceptance. One of my patients is 90 years old. Her husband died. She does not have anyone to talk to. She wants to talk about her dreams. So she comes here once a week to talk about her dreams.

Profil: This is really a very nice and interesting luxury thing to do. But does psychoanalysis solve problems?

Grosz: I am very much interested in solutions. People come to me because they are in pain. They also don’t stay for fun. It is not luxury, it is quite unpleasant at times, it is hard to look at things you don’t like to look at. Harsh things are being said here, because they are true. This will have to happen, if you have a good analyst who is not sugar coating everything. Analysis does that: You become more at ease with yourself. One of my patients said, he wanted to finish the analysis, because he said he was “now the person I wanted to be.” Some patients come because they feel not alive, some with depression, some with unfocused depression – sleeplessness. Overworking. Alcohol, drugs, they go to prostitutes. Often these are highly functioning people. Hectic life but they are depending against depression. They are frightened that if they stop for a minute the whole life will unravel.

Profil: Are you trying to become the new Oliver Sacks?

Grosz: No. We do something very different. I love his books. I started reading his books when I was young, but we are very different, I am not a neurologist. The things I am doing are much shorter. I am just trying to capture something very brief.

Profil: I found it irritating, how brief your chapters are! I always want to know more about the characters, I am not satisfied.

Grosz: How like life that is. It is deliberate. I am 60 years old, this is my first book. I wrote 150.000 words for these 50.000 words. I also try to write in a way where I tell you about another person, but in the brief edited way you can also see your own life there. It is less about a person but yourself. It is more about a moment. Not too much for or after history. Why does my patient forget his wallet in the tube on the day of his promotion? Can he not stand his own success? Is he afraid that the new job will cost him his old life? The sharper the focus on one moment the more a reader can connect.

Profil: Is this the purpose of the book: Learn something as reader? Or is it as Freud’s critics claimed already 100 years ago, that he exploited his patients stories to enhance his own celebrity?

Grosz: I wrote the book not knowing that it will be a bestseller. But of course it has something to do with me. I am sixty now and I have two young children – seven and ten years old – my mother died at my age. So I wanted to tell these stories to my children, a little bit like the “Just so…” stories by Kipling which I read to my children. I wanted to tell them things which I thought were important.

Profil: Psychoanalysis in Vienna was frozen by the Nazis, who kicked Freud out. Here in London you live very close to Freud’s house, where Anna Freud worked till the Seventies. Melanie Klein’s house is a few streets down – Freud’s theories were further developed here in the North of London. Can you see the difference between the Austrian and the English experience for an analyst?

Grosz: I went to the first psychoanalytic congress in Germany after the war in the Seventies. It was a sensitive issue – there was a whole complication of re-vitalizing psychoanalysis in Germany and Austria after the war. A lot has changed in the past 20 years. It was seen as a Jewish science but this has changed, too. In some ways psychoanalysis has it better in Germany or Austria. There the public health service pays for psychoanalysis to a certain extent – but not here in England. Psychosomatic departments in hospitals do not exist here either.

Profil: Is psychoanalysis in England seen as a religious sect?

Grosz: It is more Woody Allen, it is a joke in every television show, it is being made fun of. With my book I wanted to give a genuine picture. It also shows my errors and brings the analyst down to size. Not long ago in Great Britain therapy was not a normal thing. People thought: If you have a problem and if you think long and hard enough about it, you should be able to solve it. You don’t need anyone else. And it would be a terrible thing to ask anyone for help. There were resistances here at the time. Now it is like this: People want to understand their lives and they want to understand the mysteries why relationships, marriages, children are how they and why we cannot change – this is the theme of the book: change and why is it so difficult for people to change. Because all change requires loss. So it is good to have someone to help you through it.

Profil: This sounds a little like Dr. Ruth, the famous American sex therapist. Are you still Freudian?

Grosz: Hugely. Psychoanalysis is in my DNA. I have been interested in it since I was 16. I was introduced to Anna Freud. With Freud it is like with Isaac Newton. There are many important breakthroughs they came up with and there are parts which are not applicable anymore. Freud’s central theories which are valid till today are the idea of the story, the centrality of sexuality, the centrality of the unconscious. I am always refreshed to going back and reading his books and seeing his curiosity for people. I find this really powerful.

Profil: Analysts today do not think anymore of girls as “boys without penis”?

Grosz: I think Juliett Mitchells critics of Freud are very important. At his times these feminist views were not developed yet.

Profil: Shall we read your books or Freuds?

Grosz: My books or Freuds? Why not both? I think we should read everything. I learned from the short stories of Anton Chekhov that one little detail can trigger off a lot in a person. We just need to be conscious about it.